news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

when the price of teana dropped to less than 130,000 yuan, it immediately became the star of the car market during the mid-autumn festival holiday, but the top star was someone else.

"the traffic has doubled, and we have sold a lot. i hope it will last longer." after the official policy was implemented, sales immediately skyrocketed. liang yongming successfully experienced the sales feeling of many other popular cars this year during the mid-autumn festival.

for example, when xiaomi su7 was launched, when wenjie m9 arrived in the store, and after xiaopeng mona m03 was launched, as a car salesperson, i shouted until my voice was hoarse, and accompanied customers in line for test drives until my legs were numb.

starting at 127,800 yuan, nissan teana gave the modified version a name of "sincere edition". if such a price-breaking behavior can appear in 2023, it will definitely replicate the grand occasion of 4s stores being kicked down when buying citroen c6 for 120,000 yuan in 2023. however, only one year has passed, and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has steadily exceeded 55% in august, and the market share of joint venture vehicles has been squeezed to less than 35%.

times have changed, consumer perceptions have changed, and car-buying concepts have also changed. teana's new move proves that dongfeng nissan is still competitive, but from the perspective of passenger flow, the top traffic this holiday season belongs to the upcoming tesla model y terminator, ledao l60, zeekr 7x, and avita 07.

it is difficult to be a savior just by reducing prices, and the same is true for new forces

by mid-september, the sales figures of all automakers in august had been announced, with traditional large manufacturers seeing the highest decline of more than 50%, which was a halving of their sales.

according to statistics, among the top 15 joint venture automakers, only saic-gm-wuling achieved positive growth, with sales of 74,593 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 30.8%.

the reason for this is that, on the one hand, the replacement potential of hongguang miniev for elderly scooters has basically bottomed out in august 2023. on the other hand, it has launched a plug-in hybrid sedan priced under 100,000 yuan, which, following byd's momentum, has actually snatched away a lot of sales of 100,000 yuan fuel sedans.

companies with a drop of less than 30% include faw-volkswagen (-17.7%), saic volkswagen (-9.1%), faw toyota (-5.1%), gac toyota (-21%), beijing benz (-13.8%), gac honda (-23%), volvo asia pacific (-23.1%), changan ford (-22.1%), and yueda kia (-2.3%).

companies with declines of more than 30% include dongfeng nissan, bmw brilliance, saic-gm, dongfeng honda and beijing hyundai, with the highest decline approaching 60% at -59.2%.

in short, the new trend in car buying is that the input-output ratio brought by cost-effectiveness is decreasing. the substantial growth stimulus it can bring has become increasingly weak since 2024. so far, the entire automobile market has experienced three consecutive declines in monthly sales. according to the data from the china passenger car association, retail sales in june were 1.767 million vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%, 1.72 million vehicles in july, a year-on-year decrease of 2.8%, and 1.905 million vehicles in august, a year-on-year decrease of 1%.

however, fuel vehicles will not be quickly eliminated by the market (market share is less than 10%), because as can be seen from car companies such as saic volkswagen and faw toyota, it is not impossible to achieve sales as long as they keep up with the volume of new energy.

for example, the limited-time fixed price of passat, the starting price of 2.0t high-power is less than 160,000 yuan, and the pro version has updated the in-car ai voice model and l2+ high-speed navigation function. compared with new energy vehicles, it is still a good choice for people with more mature consumption concepts. starting from passat and then mg5, well-known gasoline vehicles have now started a limited-time fixed price policy. if the price is lowered and the intelligent configuration is added, gasoline vehicles still have a way out.

as for why the sales of gasoline vehicles have declined so rapidly, the fundamental reason is that, apart from a few german and japanese giants, there are actually only a handful of companies that have been able to reduce costs and prices, increase configurations, and at the same time generate profits instead of losing money by selling cars.

as a result, a new trend began to emerge in the auto market: in order to reduce costs, technology downgrade began, and extended-range electric vehicles became the option with the best input-output ratio, transforming from a transitional technology into the new mainstream sales.

as of now, with xpeng, zeekr, and xiaomi officially announcing their entry into the extended-range vehicle market, the only three car companies that stick to pure electric vehicles are lotus, tesla, and nio. however, whether the extended-range vehicle market can bring about sales growth is now a big question mark.

the difficulty of replicating the legend of huawei and ideal is actually beyond public perception. huawei's comeback: when the m7 was launched in july 2022, the guide price was 319,800-379,800 yuan. when it made a big turnaround in september 2023, the price was 249,800-329,800 yuan. after overall optimization, the price dropped to 70,000 yuan.

ideal will start to fight back in 2024, starting with the launch of l6, priced at 249,800-279,800 yuan, which is 52,000 yuan lower than the previous sales leader ideal l7 (301,800-359,800 yuan). another company that has repeatedly launched hits in the market is leapmotor, which actually relies on vertical integration to reduce costs. the mid-sized suv leapmotor c10, the cheapest extended-range version is priced at 135,800 yuan, and the leapmotor c16 has reduced the lowest price of medium and large suvs to 160,000 yuan through extended range.

in other words, in today's market, in addition to xiaomi, which has no burden, other car companies that have entered the extended-range market must at least be able to lower the price of the car by 50,000 to 60,000 yuan while maintaining the capabilities of pure electric models. in addition, the backlash on the original pure electric vehicles must also be considered. in essence, the current high sales of huawei hongmeng zhixing and ideal are based on system capabilities. ideal has just completed the optimization of sales channels, including weekly adjustments to sales policies based on transaction conditions, and in order to stimulate the vitality of the direct sales system, it has begun to shift to a traditional 4s store system, with each region having more power to set prices. in the near future, including wenjie will build a separate store, huawei hongmeng zhixing is also making corresponding channel adjustments to follow up on sales changes.

in a nutshell, there is no way out by rolling out extended-range vehicles. extended-range vehicles have indeed saved the sales of many car companies, but many car companies have also failed. the bright future is to roll out intelligent driving.

the era of not doing smart driving and selling cars is coming

so, let's go back to the topic of the mid-autumn festival. a single price drop cannot make a car a star that grabs the most attention from consumers. from a series of new news and new corporate moves from september to now, it can be seen that the next way out is juan zhijia.

autonomous driving is still a long way off, but intelligent driving has become the key, which is recognized by leading automakers.

starting from 2023, the first to recognize the market changes was not huawei, ideal, xpeng, or nio, which opened a large number of cities, but byd.

at many communication meetings at the end of 2023, byd executives have released signals of intelligent driving.

in january 2024, byd officially announced its vehicle intelligence strategy, and then everything was implemented like the fifth-generation dm. tengzhong, kaijuan city noa, and the eye of god advanced intelligent driving were launched at the chengdu auto show through song l ev, priced at less than 190,000 yuan. in addition, fangchengbao and huawei have in-depth cooperation, and in early august, yang dongsheng, head of byd new technology institute, said in an interview that byd’s top priority now is intelligence.

musk came to china and obtained the authorization to promote tesla's fsd. now it has been officially announced and all that is left is approval from the regulatory authorities.

huawei established yinwang, and introduced 11.5 billion yuan of investment from avita and 11.5 billion yuan from seres. yu chengdong said that not only partners can invest, but the company is open to the entire industry.

looking at the sales list again, among the players that have risen from obscurity to become the best, even the price-cutting brand zero run has the label of "rolling smart".

judging from the sales figures, compared with only one of the top15 joint venture automakers that achieved growth, the august sales figures of the new forces and the weekly sales figures announced every week can produce many new conclusions.

among the 14 mainstream new car-making forces, only two experienced a year-on-year decline, while the rest all grew.

brands with negative growth include gac aion and nezha auto. although aion's monthly sales continued to exceed 35,000 vehicles, it fell 21.5% year-on-year compared to august 2023. nezha auto's monthly sales exceeded 11,000 vehicles, but it sold 1,098 fewer vehicles than the same period in 2023, a decline of 9.1%.

only two companies had a year-on-year growth of less than 10%, including weilai's 4.4% and xpeng's 2.5%. however, although the growth figures are not exaggerated enough, they have stabilized monthly sales of more than 20,000 units. for the rest of the new forces, the year-on-year growth is at least more than 30%, including ideal's 37.8%, wenjie's exaggerated 522.1%, and leapmotor's 113.6%, both of which have reversed from obscurity. in addition, zhiji, which had been in a long-term slump before, also increased by 239.3% year-on-year in august, and its monthly sales have now stabilized at more than 6,000 units.

there are two dark horses on the list, one is xiaomi, whose monthly deliveries exceed 10,000, and the other is geely galaxy, whose monthly sales volume is 26,500 units. there is no year-on-year growth because there is no data in 2023, but its strength should not be underestimated.

among the car companies with booming sales, almost every one of them has a label of strong intelligence, while at the same time achieving high cost-effectiveness in the same price range.

in other words, the golden sentences spoken by auto executives at many press conferences in 2023 are actually being changed.

from 2020 to 2023, a phrase often heard at press conferences was, "electrification is the first half, and intelligence is the second half." but now, with the acceleration of internal competition, models with intelligence as a prominent selling point have obviously become the moat of smart car companies.

for example, in the case of xiaopeng, although the sales of its low-priced cars does not directly mean that it has turned the corner, one thing is obvious: at the same price point, the only model that can provide better intelligent driving functions is the mona m03.

it is difficult to increase sales simply by increasing prices, so intelligent driving has become an obvious card that no one is avoiding.

in summary, throughout september, the intelligent driving versions of leading automakers were updated at an accelerated pace, including but not limited to:

xiaomi's noa pilot program in urban areas across the country, the intelligent driving version has started internal testing and push, the push logic is to start with deep mi fans, and then gradually push to all models with lidar;

ideal end-to-end + vlm 10,000-person group has started to be pushed and has passed the internal testing stage. now the 10,000-person group is composed of deeply sticky users screened by ideal auto. ordinary people need to wait for the subsequent opening;

huawei's ads3.0 qiankun intelligent driving was initially launched on high-end models such as avita, enjoy s9, and m9, and will be gradually popularized later;

xiaopeng's ai end-to-end internal beta version has started to be pushed, and it is expected that a version covering ordinary consumers will be pushed at 1024;

in addition, the national urban noa version jointly developed by zhiji and momenta will also be pushed, and an end-to-end version will be prepared for release.

all this is very similar to the switch from traditional mobile phones to smart phones. intelligent driving is equivalent to imaging functions such as taking photos and recording videos, which are attracting more and more attention. a few joint venture car companies are also starting to keep up, including gac toyota's huawei + momenta intelligent driving version of the new car, which is expected to be released in october, nissan's big move that has been held back for a year, the navigation pilot noa function with propilot2.0 has begun to be displayed on the official website, and mercedes-benz and momenta are promoting the light map city noa plan, and the new car will be mass-produced in april 2025. in addition, bmw expects to upgrade the highway entry and exit ramp function that can assist eye lane change on multiple models this year.

in conclusion:

however, the operations and technical routes of each car company are different. while many car companies are gradually promoting intelligent driving, many car companies are also advancing according to byd's previous logic, that is, quickly completing the switch of power mode from fuel to new energy, and then making up for the lessons and upgrading in the field of intelligence.

for example, in may this year, the management committee of tianjin economic and technological development zone and faw-volkswagen officially signed an "investment cooperation agreement" on the introduction of three new car models. according to the agreement, faw-volkswagen will invest more than 2.3 billion yuan to successively introduce three suv models of audi and volkswagen brands in the tianjin factory. among them, two of the three imported models are new energy models, mainly for the mid-to-high-end market. it was previously disclosed that faw-volkswagen will self-develop and upgrade the plug-in hybrid system, which will be installed on the vehicle in the future. wu yingkai, deputy general manager of faw-volkswagen sales co., ltd., also made it clear in an interview: "starting from 2026, faw-volkswagen will launch a number of plug-in hybrid models independently developed by faw-volkswagen."

and everything that is happening around you and me indicates that new changes have taken place.

it is useless to simply increase the price. what is important is to ensure the advancement of intelligent or power technology while keeping the price as low as possible. this is the only way to get consumers to vote with their wallets today.